


No coward soul is mine

by Ruta



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Character Swap, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Tragic Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-08-13 04:49:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7963084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruta/pseuds/Ruta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During the ceremony that will join him in marriage to the legal guardian of his pupil, Rickon Stark, Jon Snow makes a shocking discovery. For the honor of the woman he loves, he will have to display the courage to act improperly for the right reason.</p><p>Based on <em>Jane Eyre</em> by Charlotte Bronte.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No coward soul is mine

Until a few moments ago, the light filtering through the mullioned windows dazzled the apse with kaleidoscopic refractions. The morning had painted with gold the tall and regal figure of the bride, of his almost wife, making her a transcendental vision in front of the altar. Sansa’s eyes cherished the taste of happiness that awaited them in the near future, her radiant smile already allowed to savor the sweet taste of the kiss that would have sealed their union.

If Jon had found singular the apparel choice that she had preferred to wear - not white, not cream, but a pale pink like the dawn blooming the sky cleared -, he had accepted the reasonableness of her explanation. She didn’t intend to postpone the wedding for a reason so trifling, that was the waiting of a dress that would have to be specially packaged and delivered from the capital.

All light seems to have disappeared now, covered by a passing cloud, the same way that joy has left the blue gaze of his young betrothed, each color diluted by her ghostly face. She is not an angel but a ghost, milky and sad, whose fury rages as will-o'-the-wisp.

The man who interrupted the ceremony remains in the shadows. The only detail that can be discerned of him is that he is well dressed, while the impeccable accent suggests aristocratic origins. "Were you really convinced that I would have allowed you to dishonor in this way the name of my family, of my son?" His features have to be as hard as his voice, carved in severity and without mercy. Jon doesn’t approve his attitude. Moreover, he doesn’t like the familiarity with which is dealing with Sansa.

He moves imperceptibly to separate her from the hateful presence of that individual, but Sansa’s arm, in a fluid and at the same time resolute movement, appears in front of her like a shield and forces him to immobility. He stares at her, a silent question in his eyes, but Sansa’s focus is all directed to the unknown man.

When he sees her bending her lips into a grimace, Jon is assailed with a stun feeling of déjà vu. He recalls the first few months of his employment as preceptor, how the domestic everyday life had been irrevocably damaged by the return from overseas of the young lady of Winterfell, legal guardian of his pupil, Rickon Stark. A woman capricious and moody, elegant and too taken by the social events to be interested in the studies and learning of her younger brother, had been his first, wrong impression. A woman, he had soon learned, that was devoured by regret and by the ghosts of loved ones that she had lost prematurely, who found in Rickon a perennial reminder of the past.

"Dishonor?" Her voice echoes in the nave, empty and bitter. "Your accusation would have a foundation if your name and that of your son still retained a shred of honor. What kind of honor could be associated to a matricide? A fratricide?" 

"As much as a married woman who has committed perjury to the eyes of the gods." 

Sansa gasps, as if she had been hit. Jon didn’t believe it possible, but she looks even paler than she had a moment before. She visibly falters and Jon fears that she may lose consciousness at any moment. To prevent this, he puts his arm around her slim waist to steady her. Sansa leans against him with uncharacteristic docility, rests her forehead on his shoulder and closes her eyes. The brief sigh that comes from her lips seems to deprive her of all energy. 

"Sansa?" 

She raises her head. Her gaze is glassy and barred. The lack of understanding of what is happening around him, is killing him. Jon would like to pick her up and fulfill the promises that he swore a quarter of an hour before. 

"Jon," she says brokenly. The desperate prayer with which she is watching him breaks his heart. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Whatever you see and hear from this moment, just remember that I love you and I will continue to love you until the end of my days." 

Now Jon is really scared, as only two other occasions he was in his life: one, during the war, carrying the lifeless body of Sam under enemy fire; the second, as a child, when he fell into an old water-hole in Sunspear, remaining stuck there for two full days. 

Nothing compares to the panic that sucks his breath, the anguish that is a dead weight on the chest, the fear knotted the pit of his stomach. The idea of losing her is inconceivable, a wound from which he could never recover. It is what is happening. He doesn’t know how, he doesn’t know why, but she is slipping from his grasp like a dream upon waking. One of those wonderful dreams where you wake up full of an ineffable languor, leaving bewildered to see the world with silly amazement, with growing dismay and lastly with a melancholy that is shipwrecked in regret. 

Sansa doesn’t look away from him for a time that seems endless, stretching on tiptoe to brush his lips with a tender kiss that tastes like goodbye and the tears that she is holding. The hand she rests on his chest trembles.

Jon is going to cover it with his, but she doesn’t let him. She breaks away from him reluctantly and with an affliction so obvious that he can only envisage the worst. When she holds tight his hand, it is a poor consolation and only adds to his concern. Her skin is cold as ice, as if the blood doesn’t flow. 

"How did you know?" Sansa questions in a flat tone, devoid of any emotion outside of fatigue. She turns back toward the entrance of the church, under the monumental organ. 

The stranger shows completely and with him another individual reveals his presence, a man who Jon recognizes immediately. It is none other than Lord Petyr Baelish. 

"I understand." Sansa appears finally defeated and yet, if a glance had the power to kill, Lord Baelish would already be its victim. "You couldn’t have me, so you have chosen to let me live in the misery that was my life before I met him? You are a vengeful and petty man and if this is the price I have to pay for not having given in to your flattery, well, I prefer it to your phantom love." 

Lord Baelish tightens his lips as anger distorts his face. He affectedly brings a hand to his chest with a contrite air. "You distorted my motives, niece. You wound me, if you are convinced that I am not moved solely by the desire to preserve your soul." 

"My soul," Sansa repeats with disdain, but no further comments on her real thoughts towards him. "I will let the gods to judge it and no other, neither man nor woman, even if moved by the most laudable intentions." 

The septon, remained strangely silent, interposes himself between the uninvited guests to the ceremony and the couple. "My dear child," he says, turning to Sansa. He doesn’t add anything else and the displeasure with which he blesses her is commingled to a painful torment. 

"My dear child?" The obnoxious man bursts into a throaty laugh. "The lady is a liar and her soul is damned." 

"Enough," Jon says angrily. 

Sansa tries to restrain him, grabbing him by the hem of his jacket. "Jon!" She hisses in a heartbroken appeal. 

"Enough," he repeats with more conviction, dissolving the grip of her fingers gently and then turning again. "Whatever are the relations that bind you to my wife, if you still dare disrespect her in this way, I'll have to take drastic measures." 

"Wife? Boy, you don’t know what you're talking about. Although this farce was brought to completion, she would never be your wife -" 

"Jon, I beg you -" 

"Sansa Stark is married to my son Ramsay. She is from the age of sixteen." 

Jon cannot believe it. It cannot be true. Or yes, instead? The impatience of Sansa, her urgency in wanting to hasten the wedding, her restlessness, in the light of this terrible announcement, everything acquires a desperately different value. Jon thinks back to the last afternoon spent with Sansa. They were in the library, in front of the fireplace, his head resting in her lap. She was reading aloud for the benefit of both. Jon listened, eyes closed, totally relaxed, the pleasant sound of her voice. About to doze off, believing him asleep, she had put aside the book and had bent to touch his forehead with a fiery kiss, stroke his hair with fingertips soft as the petals of a flower. Her breath had smelled of infused blackberry and had grazed his cheek like a draft of sea air. "May the gods forgive me," her voice reduced to a whisper of pure despair, "but I cannot give him up. I cannot."

A word from Sansa would be enough, Jon thinks. It would take a word from her and he would not care anything about the claims that would be brought to prove the truth of the statements of this morning. A word would be enough. The confidence he has in Sansa knows no bounds. One word, just one, and he would be hers, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. The misery etched in her face and her posture annihilated are more powerful than any words she could utter. It is not death to pull them apart then. They are separated from truth and the lie that she has always offered along with her smiles, her warmth, her love.

"Jon." He gasps to the coldness he hears in her voice. "What my father-in-law said is true."

 _My father in law._ Jon stares blankly with a plea that she has already ignored.

When Sansa starts outside the church, ordering everyone to follow her, he has no choice but to obey, as he has always done, treading with each step up the pieces of her heart as his.

* * *

 

Sansa dodges with annoyance the flowers that are raining on her face, thrown by children and women of Winterfell.

Along with orange blossom, rain down from above laughter and cheers of approval, congratulations that fill her ears as once did the threats of her husband. At that time it did not seem to exist more, while in the next, even if with difficulty, the world was returning to make sense, showed a new face, less terrifying. 

She is greeted by the welcome parade, while is followed by her archenemies and her love. _Jon_ , she thinks with anguish and slows her steps, hoping that those of him will reach hers. When it happens, Sansa tries not to cry. If these are their last moments together, she will not leave that they are governed by the pain. There will be time for pain after and certainly she will fight like she had fought every one of those that preceded it. _Never like this. No pain has prepared me for this void. Jon. Jon. Jon._  

Sansa goes beyond the entrance and the rooms of the ground floor, heading to the stairs leading to the upper floors. Around them rise from every corner whispers of confusion to that unexpected sight.  

Brienne is together with Rickon on the top of the stairs and the little miracle that is her joyous smile dies when she lays her blue eyes on the lady of the house. Aghast by her mournful expression, she takes a step forward and holds out her hands as if to take her face, before she remembers herself. "My lady," she says as a question.  

"Brienne," Sansa says, saving the pleasantries for sunny days of happiness, days that she will no longer have. "Is Sandor in the attic?"  

"Yes, my lady." Brienne peeps Jon with curiosity and the other with suspicion. "But my lady, might I remind you that it's not safe? The last time -”

"Whether or not prudent," Sansa says with iciness, "it doesn’t matter. These gentlemen have come to discover my deceits. From today there will be no secrets in Winterfell. _I_  will have no more secrets." Jon will also see the person she really is. And if he will hate her, at the end of everything... _Gods, don’t let this happen. Please._

The path up to the attic has never seemed shorter. She raises the tapestry with clumsy hands and reveals the port that it serves to hide. She knocks in the usual way and waits. Already they feel screams and curses. The presence of Jon becomes more pressing when he comes near, as if to protect her from any danger awaits them inside. Too late, she would tell him, all evils and the worse has already happened. And yet, the instinct to turn and curl up in his embrace, is so strong that she presses her nails into her palms.

Sandor opens the door. He has an eye-catching cut above his eyebrow and he is trying to stem the flow of blood with a torn and dirty handkerchief. Sansa recognizes it as one of hers by the embroidered monogram in the corner. He teams up her dress and then the gentlemen behind her. His shadowy and resentful eyes lingers a moment too much on Jon before returning to her. "It is not a good time, little bird. Today is not a good day." 

"Very well." Sansa comes forward, forcing him to move to enter. 

"Very well?" Sandor repeats, angry. "How much wine did you drink at your party?" 

"There was no celebration," Sansa tells him, "and I have never been more rational than in this moment. Let them see, Sandor. Let them see." 

It seems that he still wants to prevent their entry, but then, as often happens when it has to do with him, changes his mind and steps aside. He seems to have guessed what's going on. If it was not impossible, she would say that he's trying to be accommodating in the only way he can. "Let them see," he whispers hoarsely and his anger is a reverberation of her own grudge.  

Sansa is accustomed to the collapse of the space that serves as living-room, the state of devastation that it can reach in the worst moments. Pieces of smashed furniture, signs of scratches in the blue-green upholstery, overturned chairs, gutted pillows. This is nothing.  

"What's this smell?"  

Sandor turns to the man who spoke, without regard to hide his contempt. "Shit," he explains, pointing to the corner where the smell is coming from. "You have arrived before I could clean up."  

"Was he that struck you?" Sansa asks.

Sandor snorts. "No, little bird. I went crashing into a corner. Of course it was him. He struck me as I tried to clean up." He bends down to whisper in her ear. "Don’t go around it. Have pity for the boy. He didn’t do anything to you after all."

It is true, Jon doesn’t deserve all this. "Bring him here," she orders.

"It is not a wise decision," he warns her.

Sansa smiles with false sweetness. "His father has faced a long journey to come to see him and so did Lord Baelish. It would be rude not to allow them to meet him, do you not think?"

"I swear to gods, little bird." Sandor shakes his head. "This is cruelty."

No, she thinks, it is justice.

When Sandor returns, while holding the man with demoniac eyes that is her husband, Sansa turns for the first time towards the men who accompanied her. She meets white faces and uncertain glances. Only one is firm, just one crosses her with a deep-rooted feeling. The love that she reads in it is like the first ray of sunshine and spring after a long winter.

"My lords," Sansa says, strengthened by that taste of sunshine, "can I introduce you to my husband, Lord Ramsay Bolton?"

Jon dedicates barely a glance to Ramsay, unlike Roose and Petyr who fail to avert theirs from the insane man who is gasping incoherent words and wriggling with clear intent violent. Judging by the tone, threats against ghosts of his old victims.

"That's my husband, in all his glory. Is he not a joy?" Sansa asks, pointing at him. "Damned, dear father? Yes, I have been from the moment I was tied to this man, forced by the man next to you, and by my own aunt. And what a delightful union has been!" She closes her eyes and bursts into a laughter devoid of fun. "What a loving and gentle husband I have been blessed with! A man who took me by force, during our wedding night, and so the following for a full year. A man who tortured my maid, who beat the servants and gave perverse festivities in the heart of our home, taking his lovers in the room next to mine, and forcing me to observe them, to keep them as my companions. And when his depravity and his vices have reached the point where every pious woman would have to bring them to the law, you know what my dear, dear husband did? He has beaten me so savagely that it was lucky if I have survived. I cannot say the same for my son, who died even before I became aware of his existence."

In the cold increased of the room, Sansa tightens her arms around her chest and draws a long breath, unable to look in the direction of Jon. "What else should I have done? I gave him two years of my life and while every member of my family died, I was forbidden to return home and attend their funeral rites. I was forbidden to grieve, to mourn, to wear proper clothing to the death that I carried in my heart. When he learned that Bran was dead, you know what he said? He laughed, with that laugh that I hated, like the barking of a rabid dog. We were rich, he told me this, and once back in Winterfell he would have turned my house into a brothel. But you knew, did not you? You who were his father, you left him to live, even if you have always known that your wife is dead because of him, and so your legitimate child. And you, you who were my uncle and would have had to act in the place of my parents, you have given me in marriage to this man, hoping what? That I would become submissive? I lived with the madness by my side since I was sixteen, you really thought that I'd capitulated? What else, after all, is lust unless another form of madness?"

Sansa breathes. She feels light-headed. The horror on their faces is invigorating. "I went home, to Winterfell, after a doctor confirmed to me what I feared and hoped. I had a crazy husband. I came to Winterfell to occupy my place as legal guardian of my younger brother. I came and I set up in secret spaces adapted to the particular needs of my husband. Through a trusty old servant who had been my governess when I was a child, I found someone who watched over him. Someone strong enough not to succumb to his outbursts."

"If it were up to me, this beast would be tied to the bed day and night, but the little bird has a soft heart," Sandor says, not addressing anyone in particular.

"How is that possible?" Jon demands in an apparent state of calm. Like her, he still wears the black and gray suit and he is as beautiful as the illusion he represents. "How is it possible that no one knew? That no one ever knew?"

Sansa shows the two men standing alonside him. "It was in their own interests that no one knew. One to protect the reputation of his family, the other for his sordid motives and guilt, I guess. The gods are just and merciful, with me they have never been."

No, they have not been for many years, until... "They don’t have been until the last year," Sansa resumes softly. Jon looks at her with hopeful eyes. How strange. Ramsay’s eyes, of the color of the water stream, were always murky and ambiguous. Jon's eyes, blacks like coal and night around stars, have always been bright and honest. "Last year," Sansa continues, "when a man has unintentionally scared my horse in the moor. A man who, despite my words stinging and not polite, showed me only gentleness, treating me as I had never been treated before. Like a real person. A man who taught the discipline to my brother as a father or an older brother. A man who acted like a real friend, even though at first he hated me. A strong, honorable, kind man that has always behaved towards me with respect. In the hell that was my life until then, Jon Snow was my peace. "

Sansa smiles to the point that the muscles of her cheeks ache and it is on the wake of that smile that comes the warning of Sandor.

"Hell! Little bird, careful!"

"Sansa!"

She doesn’t have time to dodge. Ramsay is on top of her in an instant. His eyes, made prominent by the disease, and red, the sallow complexion, the dissolute grin that remained the only detail unchanged in its appearance beyond recognition. His fetid breath stinks in her face, tongue darts between his teeth as he clutches his hands around her throat and sings the same words in an endless refrain. "Wife. Wife. Blood. Death. Blood. Wife. Death."

Jon grabs him by the shoulders and forces him to let her go. Sansa rolls sideways, coughing, while her throat is flooded with liquid fire, a sharp and widespread suffering. Jon was able to easily get the better. He is above Ramsay and is hitting him repeatedly, a punch after another. Ramsay's face is a mask of blood.

Neither Roose nor Petyr seem willing to intervene. Even Sandor, who looks at her with his eyes perpetually angry and without hypocrisy. It is not up me to separate them, little bird, he is saying to her. And she knows why, remembers all the times when Sandor had proposed to put an end, that it would be easy, so easy, pass it off as a trivial incident.

A single shot, little bird, and you'd be free. Let me gift your freedom.

Sansa had always refused. The last time was two years ago, the night before she had left. "I do not know when I will come back, Sandor," she had said, so sorrowful that he had tried to swallow the usual biting tone.

He had nodded, taking a generous sip of wine and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Don’t come back, girl. Run away from your cage."

Sansa had moved her hand and with a handkerchief had cleaned the dried blood on the corner of his mouth.

He had looked at her, intrigued and cautious. "You're too good for this world and this will be your downfall." 

 _You're too good, little bird. It will be your downfall._ Sansa kneels behind Jon, rests her head between his shoulder blades and cries, as she has no longer cried for years, ever since, just come back to Winterfell, she wept over the graves of her parents and her brothers. Prisoner in her own house, caught between the living ghosts and the undead, to rebuild from the rubble a ruined castle and tame Rickon’s rebellious and wild temperament. 

She is crying, screaming at Jon to stop. _Do not kill him. Do not lose yourself for me. Do not let me become your downfall._  

"Sansa." Jon's arms wrap around her suddenly, and does it matter if the hands with which he takes her face are covered in blood and bruised? This are Jon’s hands. Sansa hides her face in his neck, his curly hair tickle her temple.  

For Jon this is a sufficient encouragement. He puts one arm under her legs, the other behind her back and he lifts her easily, holding her against his chest. For a moment, an invaluable and irreplaceable moment, there is only Jon, the rushing beat of his heart, the strength that his tense body emanates.  

Then he speaks and the moment of perfection bursts like a soap bubble, desolation and squalor that are surrounding her strike with violence. "Go back the way you came. Your presence is no longer required. There will be no marriage, either today or in the days to come," she hears him say. And Sansa cries more insistently, softly, because she understands what this means for them. She knows and is breaking all over her. 

"Take her away, boy," Sandor says, and as if he had not expected anything else, Jon leaves the room, carrying her down the stairs, through the hall and up to the great room which in hot seasons is allocated as drawing-room. 

"Sansa, my love, look at me. Sansa." 

How can she resist at the sound of so sweet supplications? How can she resist to the last acts of love that he will devote to her? How can she remain cold and insensitive to the charm of a heart able to comfort her even after the discovery of her shame? 

Humiliated, Sansa confronts him with bowed head. Find the strength to look at him takes a few minutes, the time she needs to regain full possession of her faculties. Calmer, she now feels able to support his judgment, the repulsion that he will let transpire, the frown that will plow his forehead. If in the blue-green room of Ramsay, he has managed to shield the horror to not add extra weight to the one she was already experiencing, now it will surely be visible. 

The sight of him, the full awareness of the feelings that fill the gracious curve of his mouth, the tiny folds at the edges of his quiet eyes subsides in part the storm raging inside her. Sadness. Displeasure. Compassion. Comprehension. And most of all love.  

"You cannot leave, I will not allow it."  

"Not today, but in the near future. I must. There is no other solution."  

"We'll run away!" Sansa knows to be unreasonable, but it is not much more absurd the idea to give him up?  

"And where shall we go?"  

"Wherever we want."

"And what would become of us, of our lives?" He firmly insists. "You have tried for years, Sansa, in each of your trips. Did it served the purpose? You cannot run away from yourself, from your conscience."

"I will if it is to have you."

"But would you love me the same way?" Her smile is discouraged and unhappy. "Even if I became the kind of man you hate, one without honor and morality?"

"You love me, despite what I am." The words have a taste of ashes on her tongue while Sansa pronounce them.

"Despite what you are." Solemn and severe, Jon takes her chin to get her eyes at the same height of his own. The strength of his finger draws a trail of glowing footprints on her skin, suggests the irritation that he is dominating. Or maybe it's a different feeling? The repressed desire to touch her? "And what would you be, exactly?"

"A fallen woman."

"And what am I, if not the son of a fallen woman?" He replies with an expression painful to look at, tortured. 

Guilty tears fill her eyes again and Jon holds out his arms in despair.

"Come here, girl. Let me comfort you." 

But what ephemeral consolation he can give her, when he is about to separate from her forever? Once he left, what it will take to her to slip back into the nightmare? Jon's body is shivering as her with sobs. Sansa feels soft kisses down on the crown of her pigtails, on her wet eyelashes. His delicacy has never been a source of anxiety, but now only serves to widen the echo of it. Every kiss is a knife, every caress a punch.

When, exhausted, she abandons herself to sleep, a part of her is devoured by the dismay. She knows, deep down, that waking up she will not find him beside her. The tears that soak her breast and are not hers have told her.

* * *

Winterfell has became an unfinished painting or one that the artist has just hatched before devoting himself to other works.

Pillars and blackened foundations are at the mercy of the weather and the fury of nature. The outer walls have collapsed or compromised, the beautiful facade has been irretrievably damaged by the fire. The ancient oak tree in the park has a burned side, its branches were pruned almost to the trunk in the ineffective effort to preserve the rest of the tree. 

Jon observes the miserable view with a heavy heart.  

The windows of the lower floor are all boarded up. He decides to make an attempt anyway. He knocks on the front door, but received no reply, then goes on the back of the house. The rearward is in much better shape and the hens in the farmyard are the evidence that he was waiting to blow fire on his fragile hopes. Someone still lives in the house. 

He doesn’t need to get close and knock on the door because it opens and two women come out arm in arm. Both tall, one with a slender figure, the other imposing, one with reddish hair of winter sunset, the other with yellow hair cob, one dressed in purple and the other in periwinkle blue. 

_Sansa._  

There is something weird. The clumsy way in which she seeks the support of Brienne and the uncertainty of her steps, until the particular that shakes each string of his being, even the most secret and hidden. Brienne is fencing her eyes from the midday sun with one hand, Sansa instead stares at it without hindrance, as if the rays do not dazzle her. 

Eventually Brienne sees him, still at the edge of the courtyard, and crashes as in that children's game, the one in which each one must pretend to be statues and assume their poses. Her expression is intimidating. Then, without being noticed by her lady, she puts a finger to her lips and beckons him to wait.

She enters in the house and goes out again a few minutes later, accompanied by Sandor who is carrying a wicker chair and pillows. 

Brienne makes sit Sansa, adjusts her pillows, rests a hat from the large brim on her head and then sits at her feet, on a blanket spread on the grass, taking a book that Sansa is holding out to her and begins to read aloud. 

Jon has no way to observe more than that. Sandor is advancing towards him. When he comes close enough, he grabs him by the collar and drags him far away from the two women. Jon is too shocked to resist. Sansa’s eyes have unmistakably looked in his direction and yet they have gone through him as if he were made of smoke, incorporeal. An awful, terrifying thought strikes him. She did not see him.

* * *

Sandor punches him and Jon lets himself be struck tamely. Really it is not a single punch, but Jon is not surprised by that hostile reception. Sandor’s devotion toward Sansa has always been unquestionable and Jon knew the despair in which he was plunging both, when he left Winterfell in the middle of the night. 

"Have you the faintest idea of what you've done to her, boy?" 

Jon bows his head, contrite. The taste of blood fills his mouth. Of course he knows. How could he not? It’s the same that has happened to him. "I've broken her heart." 

Sandor bursts into a scornful laugh. "Broken her heart!" He repeats as if it were a joke of very bad quality. "Do you think it was the first time that happened? The girl has had her heart broken more often than any other heroine of the stories that she loves so much. I knew from the first time I saw how you looked at her what would happen. I tried to warn her. I told the little bird that you brought with you a lot of trouble. Do you know how she responded? That you were a man of honor and that you would have never hurt her." He grabs him by the lapels of his jacket, their faces so close that his hair border on the reticulation of scars that disfigure him. "Now tell me, rotten bastard, where is the honor in sneak off like a thief? Where is the honor in forcing a woman to ride day and night to look for you, because you didn’t even have the decency to leave a bloody note?" 

Jon's heart beats wildly, deaf beats pumping anger and pain. But he is silent, even if listening is a torture. _Ride day and night to look for you._  

"You were the only joy that she had, you were her last hope. You had the keys to her freedom and instead of freeing her from the cage, you gave her a taste of the world and then you closed her inside again, running away and taking the key with you. What kind of fucking honor is this?" Sandor lets him go after a last scroll, as if the touch of him disgusted him. 

"What happened here?" Jon asks. 

"A fucking fire happened." 

Jon does not fail to notice the trembling of his hand or his pallor, the terror that has dilated his pupils until they are two blacks holes. Sansa has never told him the story of Sandor scars, the Hellhound, because 'It is not my story to tell', but he knows for hearing it from the girls in the kitchen and the maids, from Rickon. The madness of his older brother and the reckless act that has disfigured a child have left deeper scars of what the eye captures: a bitterness entirely understandable and an incurable phobia for the fire.  

"It was he who set it, that filthy beast. I was struck in the head and when I came to, the little bird was next to me. She screamed the name of the giantess and tried to carry me away from the flames."  Sandor smiles proudly and Jon smiles an identical one.  "We managed to get to the bottom floor, but the flames were too high. A beam fell in the middle. The little bird pushed me away and that's when that beast appeared. He had been hidden all the time in the shadows, waiting for his prey. He has always had a predilection for games. He hoped to take the little bird by surprise, to scare her, but did not succeed." 

The thought that Sansa has find herself so close to Ramsay, engulfed in flames and defenseless, is chilling. He tightened his teeth.

"Was he lucid?" 

"Lucid like any crowd in his madness. Enough to see that the little bird was unarmed. Enough to take a hostage." 

 _Gods_. Jon closes his eyes. "Who?" He exhales, even though he already knows the answer. 

"Who else but the brat?" 

 _Rickon_. 

"The lad is fine," Sandor growls, foreseeing the next question. "A little 'shaken, but nothing from which he will not recover in time in the school where he is."  

"A school?" Sansa sent Rickon to a boarding school? Why tear the last link with her family? The only reasonable explanation is that she did it because she is not able to take care of his brother. A staggering thought, scary. "What happened to Sansa?"  

Sandor looks at him and there is no pity or contempt or blame in his eyes, only a regret even more alarming. "There was a scuffle. She managed to free her brother, but the beast fell down the stairs and dragged her with him. As she fell, the little bird saw the flames too close."  

No, no, no!  

"They burned her eyes."  

* * *

"Who's there?"

Sitting in the shadows of the room in a chair that makes her look tiny and gaunt, Sansa turns her head in his direction. Her eyes, in the past blue as the little wildflowers that grow on the slopes of the hills, pierce him with the brutality of their faded nuance.

"Even before the fire, she was not well," Brienne told him stiffly. "After you're gone, she looked for you for days, barely allowing herself time to rest or eat. She fell ill after a week. In the delirium of fever she called your name."

_My love. What have I done to you?_

"Who's there?" She asks again, this time there is a hint of fear in her voice. Ghost, crouched at her feet, raised his muzzle and emits a welcome moan that makes her furrow her brow. Gropingly, she caresses Ghost between the ears to calm him down. "Brienne? Sandor?"

"Brienne is preparing lunch. Sandor is chopping wood." 

Sansa licks her lips. "This is not possible," she whispers in disbelief. 

Jon kneels in front of her, takes her hand and tenderly kisses her knuckles. He feels her vibrate at his touch as a violin string. 

"It is you? Is it really you? You are dead. It is what they told to get me to stop looking for you. You're dead, even if your ghost never came to see me, unlike the others. Why did not you come before? It is because you have not yet forgiven me? Speaks, ghost, even if you're just a hallucination, even if loneliness is driving me crazy." 

Her confusion and despair close his throat with a lump. "I'm here. It’s really me. I came back for you and I hope you still want me, despite the harm I caused you." 

"Jon?" Her hands move tentative toward his face. Jon weaves his and helps her, placing them on his cheeks. Sansa’s fingers smooth his beard. Her eyes sparkle with tears of recognition, she folds her lips in a tremulous smile. "Am I dreaming?"  

"No, love." He pulls a strand of hair from her temple and he stretches forward to rest his mouth on hers. He feels her wince, but she does not draw back and when he grabs her hips, she twines her arms around his neck and loses her balance to lean entirely to him.  

"It’s really you," she agrees, her forehead against his. "You came back to me. Brienne’s prayers were good for something," she says and bursts into a light and musical laugh.  

Despite everything, Jon laughs with her. "I hope she has not prayed incessantly."  

"Not incessantly, but almost every day since you disappeared."  

The burden of guilt retreats at his stomach. "Sansa, I -” 

She puts a finger to his lips. "No, Jon. I will not hear a word about it. I know you and if you acted as you did, it was only for honor." 

"Honor," Jon repeats with a hollow voice. 

"Honor, yes. What little there was of mine to preserve. Did you think I wouldn’t understand? There would be no earthly reason that might convince you to leave me. Anything outside of my own good." 

"I swore to protect you," he speaks in a cracked voice, "but where was I when you needed me?" 

"You have protected me, even when my worst enemy was myself. You were right. You've always been right. You could never give in to my desire, you could never have become a different man from what you are, accepting my proposal. And what kind of woman I'd become, forcing you to do it, if not one unworthy of your love?" 

"I should have done more, protected you as you deserved. I regret not being able to do it."

"I don’t mind," she says firmly. "Now I am a free woman and although I cannot see -" a hiccup "my only regret is just not being able to see your face. From now on will you be my eyes, Jon?"

"I will be your eyes, if you promise to be my heart."

"It is a deal."

"We will rebuild Winterfell, wife. My aunt left me all her belongings in inheritance. We will build your home and we will get back Rickon. We will be a family."

Sansa smiles and fills his face with small light kisses like butterfly wings. "We'll be a family."

**Author's Note:**

> https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/43712


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